'Jesus glow': An evangelical 'beauty trend' falls painfully flat

Far-right Christian nationalists are making a concerted effort to recruit members of Generation Z, and one of the outlets they are using is TikTok.

In an article published on May 5, Salon's Amanda Marcotte describes the "Jesus glow" trend: evangelicals claiming that young women can enhance their physical beauty if they embrace fundamentalist Christianity.

Christian fundamentalists, Marcotte notes, are posting before-and-after videos in an effort to convince viewers that conversion improved their physical appearances.

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"Forget drinking water and exercise," Marcotte explains. "According to the Christian influencers of TikTok, the hottest new beauty trend is accepting Jesus Christ as your lord and savior. The still-unbanned social media site is currently awash in before-and-after videos from people purporting to be recent converts, celebrating their physical transformation from alleged misfit to their current 'Jesus glow' status."

Marcotte continues, "There's the former goth who now sports a prairie dress look. Or a bodybuilder who has now shrunk herself into a more petite figure, complete with blonder hair. Or a woman who once cried in dark cars but now lives in sunlight while wearing more expensive clothes."

But according to Marcotte, a "close watch of the videos suggests" that these alleged converts "looked fine in their former lives as heretics."

"They often rely on tricks like lighting and filters to exaggerate the contrast between then and now," Marcotte notes. "Mostly, they're just dressing differently. As Taylor Leigh and Drew McCoy of the Antibot YouTube channel argued, these folks aren't objectively better-looking in their 'after' images. They're just conforming more to a right-wing vision of proper gender presentation, often one with white supremacist overtones, as the 'Jesus glow' effect on hair frequently requires the aid of a bleach bottle."

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Amanda Marcotte's full article for Salon is available at this link.